Bob Schaffer: “We tried, you and I tried and others, the more conservative Members of Congress tried to actually put more money into…”

“We tried, you and I tried and others, the more conservative Members of Congress tried to actually put more money into that unfunded Federal mandate because we know it frees up local districts to provide pay raises for teachers, to build new classrooms, to invest in the technology. We offered amendment after amendment here on the House floor when the appropriations bill was here to beef up the funding for the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act; but Al Gore and Bill Clinton, they did not help us, they were not interested. In fact, their budget opposes what we want to accomplish with fully funding the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. I am hopeful and optimistic that we are on the threshold of perhaps a new day over in the White House with a new kind of leadership that really understands education funding is about real people, real children. When the Department loses funds or squanders resources or mismanages programs, there are real Americans who suffer and suffer mightily as a result of that kind of mismanagement, and it is the same kind of mismanagement that the White House even wrote books about in 1993. It is a tragedy that they failed to follow their own advice, clean up the waste, fraud and abuse in the Department, get money to the classroom. They have had 8 years to work on it, they have squandered their opportunity, they cannot do it. We will.”